Curators Open Call Projects
Elisa Calosi
Eliza Calosi is an established cultural manager and curator with extensive experience in coordinating international projects in the fields of arts and culture. Her professional expertise includes cultural project management and programming, the development of international partnerships, work with networks, and cultural mediation. Her interests focus on the creation and development of innovative contemporary art formats that explore the interaction between artistic practices and the socio-political context.
Rositsa Getsova
Rositsa Getsova is an influential Bulgarian visual artist, curator, and gallerist, known for her work in the field of contemporary art, which explores ephemerality, transformation, and the relationship between the human and the digital through objects, installations, and video. She is a key figure on the Sofia art scene, founder and director of Gallery Arosita, and an organizer of events that present new trends in contemporary art.
Ina Valentinova
Ina Valentinova is a visual artist and curator with an educational background in fine arts, printmaking, painting, and textile art, acquired at Minerva Academy in Groningen, the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, and the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. Her professional practice includes the development of workshops and educational formats in the fields of textile art, street art, and public art, as well as painting and printmaking. In her artistic research, she focuses on themes such as animism, the relationship between humans and nature, and spirituality. Her work is characterized by strong visual language and a narrative approach, where utopian imagery intertwines with a critical perspective on contemporary reality, shaping her curatorial outlook on contemporary and outsider art.
Invated Artists
Stela Lie
Stela Lie is a visual artist and illustrator who combines creative practice with academic work. She specializes in graphic illustration, balancing personal artistic projects with commercial commissions while challenging the boundaries between illustration and fine art. Over the years, she has held numerous solo exhibitions in Romania, Switzerland, and other countries, and in 2005 she received an award for graphic art from the Uniunea Artiştilor Plastici din România. Stela Lie lives and works between Bucharest and Lugoj, while also teaching illustration and visual arts and actively participating in the organization of exhibitions and artistic events.
Imaginar Collective
Imaginar Collective is an independent artistic group led by Marius Adrian, created as a space for contemporary art, experimentation, and dialogue between artists and audiences. The collective organizes exhibitions, performances, and online events, presenting visual arts, collage, painting, photography, installations, and mixed media. Imaginar Collective brings together the artists Mihai-Andrei Cornea, Carla Francesca Schopel, Eugenia Gritsku, and Marius Adrian, united by a shared interest in innovation, social themes, and interdisciplinary approaches. The collective aims to connect artists and audiences, establishing itself as a significant platform within the contemporary art scene.
K not K
K not K (officially Karpov not Kasparov) is a Romanian electronic duo that turns chess into music. The project originated in Bucharest and quickly established itself as one of Eastern Europe’s most exciting musical exports. Their signature sound blends synth-pop, disco, and post-punk with oriental influences, powerful basslines, and danceable rhythms, interwoven with intelligent irony and playful nostalgia. Their live performances are often multidisciplinary, incorporating theatrical and ballet elements, projections, or even chess matches played by the audience, transforming each concert into a dynamic and unpredictable stage experience.
Rositsa Minovska-Devedzhieva
Rositsa Minovska-Devedzhieva is a renowned puppetry director with many years of experience in Bulgarian and international theatre projects. In recent years, she has also established herself in a new role as an illustrator, combining her artistic sensitivity with a strong ability to tell stories through paper-based compositions. In her artistic practice, she uses paper as a plastic medium, allowing her to create worlds and characters that come to life through a carefully guided hand, imagination, and attention to detail. Her work reflects a deep interest in storytelling, where each form and line becomes part of a “fairy-tale” reality that unfolds before the viewer.
Ilia Devedzhiev
Ilia Devedzhiev is an author, actor, and storyteller working in the fields of theatre and children’s creative practices. He creates plays and fairy-tale stories that he presents on stage and in digital formats. He is part of the Theatre Group “Kamila” and the platform Digitaltheatre.bg, where he develops projects focused on imagination and creative thinking. Ilia is known for his ability to communicate with children and young people, engaging them in the creative process and encouraging them to discover the stage as a space for freedom, play, and self-expression.
кинематограф бг
Kinematograf BG organizes both live screenings — including open-air events and shows in various cities — and digital initiatives that provide a stage for emerging filmmakers and new ideas in the world of short cinema. In addition, Kinematograf BG carries out a range of educational initiatives such as workshops, lectures, and discussions with leading authors and directors, offering opportunities for knowledge exchange and a deeper understanding of contemporary cinema. Kinematograf is established as an important cultural space for interaction between directors, artists, and audiences, combining a passion for cinema with support for contemporary film expression.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Anton Tsanev
Anton Tsanev is a Bulgarian artist based in Sofia, working across sculpture, photography, video, and industrial design. His practice explores the relationship between ecology, spatial systems, and sculpture as a structural and process-based model, where technique becomes a carrier of meaning. He holds a degree in sculpture from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. He lives and works in Sofia
Yona Pelovska / Da Zain
Yona Pelovska / Da Zain is an artist and filmmaker with a PhD in philosophy, based in Canada, working in the field of expanded cinema, video art, and transmedia practices. Her practice explores perception as a generator of realities, focusing on art as a mediator between seeing and dreaming, technology and the mythology of vision. She has presented her work at international festivals, academic institutions, and galleries across Europe and North America.
Melih Nehat
Melih Nehat is a Bulgarian-Turkish artist and designer working across visual art, interior, and product design. His practice explores identity, belonging, and social boundaries, questioning constructed notions of nationhood and ethnicity. His work addresses histories of intolerance and the constructed nature of nationalism, emphasizing human existence as rooted in shared experiences and mutual influence. His practice combines design and visual art with a focus on social and human rights-related themes. He works across different cultural contexts.
Stefani Stoeva
Stefani Stoeva is a visual artist working in the field of photography and editorial practices. Her practice explores the traces of grief and loss, focusing on what resists exposure — disappearing images, hidden photographs, and gestures of memory that emerge beyond language. Her work approaches photography as a space of slow illumination, where death and memory are inscribed within the act of seeing and preserving the image. Alongside her artistic practice, she is the editor-in-chief of Obscura magazine and former deputy editor-in-chief of “Programata”. She also collaborates with RRC “Toplocentrala” on artist dialogues and curatorial exchanges.
Kate Litvinova
Kate Litvinova is a visual artist working across video art, digital practices, and curatorial formats. She holds a degree in Art Theory and History from the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, as well as a Master’s degree in Art Project Curating from the Russian State Humanitarian Institute. Her work develops ideas of collective authorship, where participants create and describe characters that are later integrated into video material. This process explores horizontal modes of perception and interaction between human and non-human agents across physical and digital spaces. She has participated in exhibitions and projects in Montenegro and the United Kingdom, including METAMORPHOSIS (Podgorica, 2023), Reakcija (2024), and Alteregoism (London, 2025), as well as public talks and artistic programs.
Tanya Decheva
Tanya Decheva is a Bulgarian visual artist working in the field of photography and digital visual practices. Her practice explores contemporary photography in the context of the internet and digital technologies, focusing on new forms of image-making, observation, and visual documentation. She holds a BA and MA in Photography from NATFA “Kr. Sarafov”, Sofia, and is currently a full-time PhD candidate researching new photographic art in the digital context. She has worked as a photographer for theatre productions and festivals, including the Ivan Vazov National Theatre and One Dance Week (Plovdiv), and has also worked as a lecturer and assistant in photography and visual arts in educational institutions in Sofia. She has presented solo and group projects in Bulgaria, including at Synthesis Gallery and the exhibition “25x25” at Instituto Cervantes.
Desislava Hristova
Desislava Hristova lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria. She is a professor at the National Academy of Art, where she teaches printmaking and composition, and has developed a long-standing artistic and academic practice in the field of graphic arts. Her work focuses on printmaking as an expanded field, encompassing both traditional and digital techniques, with an emphasis on experimentation and visual transformation. Her practice intertwines research, teaching, and artistic production, often in dialogue with contemporary technologies and image-making processes. Her solo projects — such as “Re-arrangement,” “Equi.poise,” and “Inside or Outside?” — explore themes of balance, disintegration, and the reconfiguration of structure, as well as the boundaries between the material and immaterial. Hristova actively participates in international exhibitions, biennials, and printmaking forums, and has received numerous awards in the field of graphic arts. She also contributes as a curator and organizer of artistic and educational initiatives
Daniela Kostova
Daniela Kostova is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, installation, video, and performance. Her practice explores geography, cultural identity and representation, as well as the processes of translation and communication across social and cultural systems. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (New York), Queens Museum (New York), Kunsthalle Wien (Austria), and others. She lives and works in New York.
Kaloyan Ivanov
Kaloyan Ivanov is a Bulgarian artist born in Sofia, working between Bulgaria and international contexts. He works with painting, performance, and installation. His practice explores audience participation as an active co-author of the artwork, as well as the transformation of the artistic object through interaction, play, and embodied experience. He holds a BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and received the Awesome Foundation Grant (Sofia, 2019). His work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions in Bulgaria, the United States, South Korea, and Canada, including Credo Bonum Gallery (Sofia), Arosita Gallery (Sofia), Williamsburg Art & Historical Center (New York), and Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (Gimpo). His participatory performance work “Void Simulacrum” has been presented at numerous festivals and contemporary art spaces across North America and Europe, including FIGMENT, Trestle Gallery, and PS1 (Iowa City).
Mia Momchilova
Mia Momchilova is a Bulgarian visual artist working across fashion design, product design, and multimedia practices. Her practice explores the relationship between fashion, image, and performance, using a multimedia language, appropriation, and anti-fashion strategies. Her work has been presented in exhibitions, festivals, and projects in Bulgaria and internationally, including Water Tower Art Fest, Sofia Underground, Sofia Art Week, The Fridge, Atelier “Plastelin”, and Depoo Gallery. She lives and works in Sofia.
Nikola Nikolov
Nikola Nikolov is a vocalist and composer in the experimental music group TDК. His practice explores experimental forms of sound production and recording, including field recordings, no-input mixing, and power electronics, working through expanded sonic strategies and collaborative formats. He has participated in numerous collaborations with Bulgarian artists, including So Called Crew and 8m/s. He is a co-founder of the event platform Post Culture and a former curator of the Wrong Fest festival. Since late 2025, he has been curator of the music program “Liminal/Tetza” at RRC “Toplocentrala”.
Irena Paskali
Irena Paskali is a visual artist based in Cologne, Germany. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje and holds a Master’s degree from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. She works across multiple media, including video, photography, drawing, and experimental film. Her practice places the human being at its center, addressing themes of identity, alienation, and the fragmentation of cultures and religions. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally and is the recipient of residencies, scholarships, and awards in Germany, France, Togo, Russia, Latvia, South Korea, and Albania.
Nikolay Shushulov
Nikolay Shushulov is a Bulgarian visual artist working between Sofia and Prague. His practice operates in the fields of visual art and design, with a focus on spatial interventions and the construction of open conceptual structures. He develops visual systems without fixed meanings, using everyday objects and seemingly banal forms to reveal the mechanisms that shape our perception of the environment. Processes such as repetition, accumulation, and saturation are central to his work—serving both as formal strategies and critical tools through which he examines how visual and social patterns become normalized and taken for granted. Through playful and experimental gestures, including the use of toys and repetitive templates, he invites viewers to reconsider their own habits of seeing and interpretation. At the same time, his practice engages with themes of memory and the public environment, addressing the legacy of communist monuments and brutalist architecture as active elements within the contemporary visual landscape. He graduated from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia in 1992, specializing in Mural Painting. In 2020, together with Tedi Liho and Vasko Slavkov, he co-founded Depoo Gallery—an independent space for contemporary art that brings together artistic practices and communication design.
Mitko Mitkov
Mitko Mitkov is a Bulgarian visual artist born in Ruse, currently living and working in Germany. His practice is primarily based in photography, print media, and experimental sound and spatial formats, often moving beyond conventional understandings of the image and the exhibition space. His work explores themes such as communication, institutional structures, collective processes, and the absurdity of information systems. Projects like “Feedback” at MK&G Hamburg and “Manual” reveal a strong interest in mechanisms of participation, control, and data deconstruction, often through playful or critical interventions. In parallel, Mitkov actively collaborates in international and independent artistic contexts such as the Bad Boy Jesus Tape Club, where he combines sound, text, performance, and publishing practices. Projects including “Loglines,” “All You Can’t Eat,” and “Views of Doves” expand photography into the fields of archive, publication, and spatial installation. His practice is characterized by a hybrid approach across media, where the image operates as a process, situation, and communicative channel rather than a finished object.
Irina Vilkina
Irina Vilkina is an artist based in Yekaterinburg, working with video art, installation, and data from scientific and sensor systems. Her practice explores natural processes, technological decay, randomness, and perceptual distortion, using archival and digital data as visual material. Her work has been presented in various contemporary art and video contexts, including the project “Пишем смяна” (2023), based on sensor network data and the concept of a “cosmic sieve” as a structure of movement and information distribution. She lives and works in Yekaterinburg.
Martian Tabakov
Martian Tabakov is a Bulgarian artist working across sculpture, installation, performing arts, and sound practices. His practice explores the relationship between object, sound, and space, as well as the active role of the viewer in transforming the artwork through interaction and presence. His work has been presented in exhibitions, theatre, and music-related projects in Bulgaria and internationally, including site-specific and sound installations integrated into performative environments. He lives and works in Sofia.
Niya Pushkarova
Niya Pushkarova is a Bulgarian multimedia artist and curator working in the field of contemporary art and cultural initiatives. Her practice explores themes such as feminism, locality, and geopolitics, combining a conceptually driven and politically engaged approach with autobiographical and poetic elements. She graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Reading (UK), where she received the Kodak Award. She is the founder of Water Tower Art Fest and co-founder of IME Association. Her work and curatorial projects have been presented at international festivals and exhibitions across Europe, Asia, and North America. She lives and works in Bulgaria.
HR-Stamenov
HR-Stamenov is a Bulgarian artist born in Plovdiv, working across painting, new media, and light installations. His practice combines traditional oil painting with technological systems, high-voltage light installations, and experimental spatial interventions. He holds an MA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy, in the class of Prof. Omar Galliani. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums and contemporary art institutions across Europe, including La Triennale di Milano (Milan), Museo Luigi Pecci (Prato), Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia (Gdańsk), Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, and Sofia City Art Gallery. He works between Bulgaria and international artistic contexts.
Stanka Tsonkova-Usha
Stanka Tsonkova-Usha is a Bulgarian visual artist working in the field of photography and experimental visual media. She graduated from a photography school in 1973. She has held more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous international and national group exhibitions in cities such as Berlin, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Prague, Amsterdam, and others. Her practice explores photographic language through experiments with chemical processes and materials, expanding photography beyond documentation toward more intimate and conceptual visual forms. Her works are held in public and private collections across Europe, the United States, and Japan, including the National Library of France, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, and the Japan Foundation.
Isabella Rubino
Isabella Rubino lives and works in Turin, Italy. She studys at the Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti di Torino, where she develops her practice in the fields of performance, urban interventions, and video art. Her motto, “Life should be lived as a work of art,” reflects her overall artistic approach. Isabella Rubino’s work operates within the fields of performance, site-specific interventions, and video art, focusing on the relationship between body, space, and memory. Her practice is often situated in specific architectural environments carrying personal or cultural histories, which she activates through physical presence and action. At the core of her work is an exploration of care, effort, and the possibility of reconnecting with deeper, almost archaic layers of human existence. In the context of a fast-paced and detached contemporary society, she proposes gestures of slowing down, attention, and restoration. Through symbolic elements and minimalist actions—such as the use of objects related to time (a pendulum, an hourglass)—Rubino creates poetic situations in which themes of transience, environmental fragility, and processes of destruction and preservation intertwine. In her work, space is not merely a backdrop but an active participant, carrying memory and emotional charge. Her practice functions as a form of resistance against forgetting and the automation of everyday life, emphasizing experience, presence, and the idea that life can be conceived and lived as an artistic act.
Simeon Stefanov
Simeon Stefanov is a Bulgarian visual and sound artist from Pleven. He graduated with a double major from the Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts and develops a practice at the intersection of sound design, photography, experimental electronic music, and digital art. His work is characterized by a minimalist and formalist approach to the image, focused on the reduction of visual elements and the exploration of abstraction. Influenced by artists such as Franco Fontana, Edward Weston, and Andreas Gursky, he constructs a visual language in which composition, rhythm, and surface play a central role. Alongside his artistic practice, Stefanov works as a sound designer on a number of film projects, including collaborations with director Julia Păstrakova, among them the documentary film “Limbo,” nominated for a Student Academy Award. The project “Perforated Landscape” develops his interest in space and its absence. Through digitally manipulated imagery and abstract animation, the work explores negative space as an active compositional element. The interaction between image and sound — built through a heavily processed digital drone — creates a sense of disintegration, pulsation, and instability, where absence itself functions as a carrier of meaning.